Elsewhere

I use (and luuuuuv!) the excellent Pocket Casts podcasts app. I discovered it when I switched to the OnePlus One and it’s probably my number 1 used app on the phone. I have discovered so many new podcasts thanks to it (because it has a good discovery tab and also because I listen to more podcasts now so I try and discover new stuff).

I wouldn’t be too far from the truth in saying that one major reason why I am still with the OnePlus One rather than going back to my iPhone 5S is Pocket Casts. Not coz Pocket Casts isn’t available for iOS, but because the OnePlus One with its 64GB of storage lets me download tons of podcasts while my iPhone 5S is a measly 16GB and so I can’t download much stuff for offline use. Sure, the OnePlus One’s larger screen is good for reading, but I don’t do much reading on that nowadays. The OnePlus One has the advantage of 64GB storage and the ability to just copy movies and music to it via MTP, while the iPhone 5S has the disadvantage of low storage (in my case) and the inability to just copy stuff over it without iTunes. The iPhone 5S keyboard is way better though (I hate typing on the OnePlus One, even with custom keyboards like Flesky) and its camera is miles ahead of the OnePlus One too.

Anyways, I digress …

Pocket Casts is an amazing podcasts and you must check it out if you are into podcasts. Apart from a ton of great features, it also has sync. This means all my subscriptions on the OnePlus One will easily be in sync on the iPhone 5S too. More importantly, not just the subscriptions, but also my progress with each podcast. Isn’t that cool!

As if that wasn’t cool enough though, I discovered via the latest episode of All About Android (where one of the Pocket Casts developer was a guest) that they now have a web player version. W00t! You can view it at https://play.pocketcasts.com/ – as with the Android/ iOS apps it’s not free, there’s a one time purchase, but that’s fine in my opinion. Free doesn’t have a long term future so I am happy paying for apps & services as long as they are good and meet my needs. (Apparently the web player was released on their blog in October itself). The web player too syncs with the mobile apps.

A note about the sync: unlike Kindle syncing for books (which is what I am used to) the app/ web player does not prompt you that you are currently on a further location with another device. If you already have the podcast open and you click “play” it will continue from where you are. But if you re-open the episode it will continue from where you are on the other device.

Update: Some blog posts from Russell Ivanovic (one of the creators of Pocket Casts; he was the guest in the All About Android podcast). The first post was mentioned on the podcast so I checked out his blog:

p.s. I began using the iOS version of Pocket Casts the other day, and boy, is the Android version much better designed! Wow. This is the first app where I feel the Android version is much better designed than iOS. Most other apps have it the other way around. In the podcast Russell too mentioned something similar – that they are giving priority to Android over iOS nowadays.